Thursday, March 22, 2012

Day 1 of the KDP Select Promotion

Well, where do I even begin?!

The free promotion began last night at around 12:20 a.m. and it was slow going for a few hours, during which I was seriously questioning my promotional tactics. Had I not done enough? Was the product not worth even getting for free?

But slowly and surely, the downloads started trickling in. Thank goodness.

I went to bed at 3:40 a.m. at #57,000+ ranking. And that's not even the worst that the book's fallen.

In the morning I checked the two major websites for free kindle books (PixelofInk.com and Ereadernewstoday.com) and discovered that I'd been featured in the latter. And along with a bunch of shares from my wonderful facebook family and friends, the book was getting some major exposure.

By 10:21 I was #240 in the Free Kindle Store (the same one you see on the right side of the page in the Kindle Store). Here went the rest of the day:

10:26 - #178 in the Free Kindle Store
11:00 - #178 in the Free Kindle Store
11:48 - #130 in the Free Kindle Store
1:00 - #81 in the Free Kindle Store (broke the Top 100, did a happy jig, took a nap)
3:00 - #61 in the Free Kindle store (the power of naps has been revealed!)
4:00 - #56 in the Free Kindle Store
5:00 - #58 in the Free Kindle Store (ordered a pizza to celebrate... put on ALL the toppings!!)
10:46 pm - #38 in the Free Kindle Store 11:59 - #38 in the Free Kindle Store
And now, at 12:48 a.m., I will be heading to bed at a lovely #35.

I can't tell you how giddy this all makes me! I didn't make any money – hell, I gave away a lot of books! – but aside from the exposure, it also gives me a lot of satisfaction (joy even) to know that many more people will be reading my story. I know not everyone who downloaded the ebook will read it, but at least a small portion of them will. And I really hope they'll enjoy it.

That's how I know I was meant to write: when it didn't matter if I got paid as long as someone reads my story.

So to my friends and family and to friends of friends and family of family (wait, that's still my family...), I THANK YOU! I will close my eyes tonight with a smile on my face.